


Closing Time

by FunnyWings



Series: Codas/Canonverse Fics [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Dean's POV, M/M, Season 15, a destiel retrospective, here's to wondering what happens after, season 15 spoilers, season 5, set to a semisonic song, sorta - Freeform, the show must end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25569598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: Interweaving story of two nights, one on the night before Sam said yes to Lucifer and the other before the guys have figured out how the hell they're going to face down God. For some people, the more things change, the more they stay the same.Excerpt:“I mean…” Dean paused. What did he mean? And worse, did he really want to say it out loud? “I mean, the story ends. One way or another. What comes after that?”Dean expected Cas to say it would just be more of the same. Or that the world would go on, and maybe need them a little less. He didn’t say either of those things. Instead he ate another spoonful of cereal. He didn’t look as if he was enjoying it, Dean thought to himself. But he ate it anyway, as if it were enough that if only his taste buds were a little more human he could be enjoying it.“I don’t know that either,” Cas said. “What do you want to come after?”This stopped Dean short, because want had never really come into it. Not beyond preserving his little family, desperately clawing at whoever he could to keep them close, keep them alive, keep them from getting hurt. And failing, always failing.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Codas/Canonverse Fics [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117457
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	Closing Time

***THEN***

It’s the end of the world and there’s an angel on his shoulder. Go figure.

Well, maybe at his shoulder would be the correct way to phrase that, Dean thought to himself, as he stared down at the glossy varnished bar top and the pitiful glass of whiskey he’d been sipping at for half an hour already. He wanted to be out of his mind. He wanted to soberly count every second before his brother said yes to the worst of all propositions, and somehow keep the sands of time from slipping through his fingertips for just a little longer.

Sam, who for some reason was able to sleep, had banished him from the motel room about an hour earlier because Dean’s pacing was driving him crazy. In all fairness, it was driving Dean crazy too. He wanted to believe so badly, that it was all going to end soon. That they’d hit Devil Day and at the very least the weight of the world would be off his shoulders. Because it was enough to know he was a failure, but he couldn’t make everyone else pay the price for his mistakes. Or maybe he could, he thought to himself darkly, as long as it kept Sam alive. And it was that thought that finally pushed him to knock back the rest of his whiskey. It slid down his throat, burning all the way down.

“You can sit, y’know?” he muttered at last. The angel- no harp, no heavenly chords, no nothing, but an angel nonetheless- didn’t move. “Sam sent you to babysit me. I get it. The least you can do is pretend we’re friends out for a drink.”

“Well, if you insist on behaving like a child,” he said quietly. But he sat down. Dean appreciated that, really he did. Which is why he ordered two drinks instead of one that second and final round. Not that it mattered really.

***NOW***

It occurred to Dean that after ten years of doomsdays he should really have realized that God was, if nothing else, a complete and total asshole. There had always been a certain amount of evil in apathy, an evil that had prevented Dean from packing up his life and ignoring the things that go bump in the night. Because quitting, retiring, however you wanted to frame that, it was an active choice not to help others. But there was something more wicked in schadenfreude, a line that went beyond what was moral or immoral. Maybe that was the purview of gods, but he wasn’t much interested in the justification of it all.

That night Dean was sitting in the kitchen of the bunker, contemplating eternity and trying to read errant plotlines in the palms of his hands when he realized he wasn’t alone. Maybe it was the sound of quiet footsteps or breathing that clued him in. It wasn’t hard to guess who it would be. Sam would be in his room, staring at his alarm clock and willing himself to sleep, even a little. And then he’d be up at six and out for his morning run and a secret Skype call with Eileen that Dean wasn’t supposed to know about. Jack had taken to avoiding Dean like the plague (and considering there was an actual plague going on, that was saying something). It was hard not to give Jack what he wanted, the forgiveness he craved, because Dean knew how hard it was to go without. John Winchester had never forgiven him, not really, for being a burden. Dean had had to do that himself, and forgive John Winchester while he was at it.

And he would forgive Jack, but the thought of it right now made bile rise in his throat, and he couldn’t get the words out right. He just couldn’t.

But no, there was someone else standing at the door.

“I’m not in the mood,” Dean muttered.

“I wanted cereal.”

“You don’t eat, doofus,” Dean retorted. Still, it eased something in him, to know that Cas had the presence of mind to lie, badly, to cover up his concern. It meant this wasn’t a fight waiting to happen, or a well-meant intervention. “You got something to say, Cas?”

“I don’t know,” said Cas, after a long pause in which he seemed to fill the room with that aching empathy he’d spent the last ten years perfecting. A wretched pain so tangible, it hurt to be near him. Dean breathed in and out, as smoothly as he could manage.

“Yeah. Me neither.”

***THEN***

Dean wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even buzzed. Part of him was angry about that, and part of him was relieved. The later it got, the more disappointed he could see the barkeep getting that he wasn’t ordering anything else, but wouldn’t leave his seat for another patron. Dean reminded himself to leave a decent tip, as an apology.

Cas just sat there, stony and dour. Excellent company for a funeral wake.

“This time tomorrow,” Dean started. But he didn’t finish.

“It already is tomorrow,” said Cas. This is one of the least helpful things he could have said, and yet Dean found he respected the honesty. They were counting on one hell of a depressing Hail Mary, and Cas had risked more than most to get them to the fourth quarter of this twisted game. Or however football worked, Dean was more of a pro wrestling guy if he was being honest.

“What happens if we win. If Sam actually… does it?” Dean asked. He hadn’t even had the courage to ask himself this question, but somehow it seemed okay to ask Cas. Because Cas didn’t have all the answers, but he had a lot of them. Because Dean wanted someone to tell him that it was going to be alright, even though he knew that wasn’t true.

“The world goes on,” said Cas, which was a truthful way to answer the question. Dean looked around him, at the sad sacks drinking their sorrows away late at night and dreading the drive back home to whatever waited for them there. This version of Earth almost didn’t seem worth saving, not at the cost it was going to take to save it. Almost.

“Mazel tov,” said Dean. Cas raised his glass. They both drank, but not much.

***NOW***

“I keep thinking,” Dean said, watching Cas munch on Jack’s cereal, the cereal Sam had expressly forbidden for some health reason or another. “I keep thinking that this is the end of it all.”

Cas looked up at him, sunken blue eyes squinting a little in lack of comprehension.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Dean paused. What did he mean? And worse, did he really want to say it out loud? “I mean, the story ends. One way or another. What comes after that?”

Dean expected Cas to say it would just be more of the same. Or that the world would go on, and maybe need them a little less. He didn’t say either of those things. Instead he ate another spoonful of cereal. He didn’t look as if he was enjoying it, Dean thought to himself. But he ate it anyway, as if it were enough that if only his taste buds were a little more human he could be enjoying it.

“I don’t know that either,” Cas said. “What do you want to come after?”

This stopped Dean short, because want had never really come into it. Not beyond preserving his little family, desperately clawing at whoever he could to keep them close, keep them alive, keep them from getting hurt. And failing, always failing.

“I want to get a boat,” Dean said. “And push myself out to sea. And fish until my hair goes gray.”

“Your hair is already going gray,” Cas said gently. Dean ignored this.

“And I want… I want someone else to do it all,” said Dean, and he felt shame tingle through his spine at the admission. At the awful truth of it. “But we don’t always get what we want.”

“I think… I think you fear a world in which you’re not a big damn hero anymore. You don’t need to. There will always be people who know you that way.”

Cas didn’t say that he was someone who would always see Dean that way. But he didn’t have to. It was a half spoken untruth between them, the basis for a relationship stricken with mistrust and regret and a little too much affection. Each of them believed in the other more than they believed in themselves, and as it happened that wasn’t the strongest foundation on which to build a friendship. Or anything for that matter.

“You don’t believe I want the quiet life?” Dean asked, instead of addressing the tangled mess of ego Cas had been gently pulling on. Enough of Dean had unraveled over the years that he had a sense of when to leave well enough alone.

“The desires of a man can be multitudinous and contradictory,” said Cas. Dean raised an eyebrow. “I think more than one version of you can be true.”

Especially the versions you don’t like so much, Dean thought to himself. The big damn hero, the failure. The son, the brother, the father. The comic relief protagonist for a bunch of schlocky pulp horror novels by a two bit hack writer with a god complex. And all of him, contained in that. It was safer than the alternative. It was going to be the death of him.

***THEN***

The opening notes to “Closing Time” started up, and Dean knew it was time to hightail his ass out before the barkeep managed to strike him dead by a dead-eyed stare alone. In the poor guy’s defense, Dean and Cas were the only ones left sitting in the now empty bar, and they had been for the last fifteen minutes. But it was hard to leave.

Sitting at that stool, in a dive bar where no one knew his name, Dean could feel stuck in time. Like he was a figurine in a snow globe, never having to come to terms with the consequences of time passing him by. And sure, he probably wouldn’t pick to be stuck in these awful moments of anticipation for the rest of time, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than the sun coming up.

“I think he wants us to leave,” Cas said, blunt as ever. Dean rolled his eyes, and grabbed his jacket off the hook under the bar. Cas had never taken his overcoat off, which was as unsurprising as it was annoying. “What a passive aggressive song.”

“That’s kinda the point,” said Dean, forking over a good hundred dollars in hard earned (hard-swindled) cash. This at least got the guy behind the counter to stop glaring at them. Dean didn’t miss the money like he might have on any other night. What was he gonna do with it? Like Cas had said, it was tomorrow already. The day Sam died. The day Dean let Sam die, and did nothing to stop it. On purpose. “Well, sorta. It’s also about fatherhood or something.”

“Closing out one’s children?”

“No, like… Like, new beginnings or something,” said Dean. Cas frowned at him. “I don’t know man, I don’t listen to fucking Semisonic.”

Whatever Cas was going to ask next was interrupted by the barkeep pointedly clearing his throat.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” said Dean, grabbing Cas’ arm and heading for the exit, just as the song recommended. Cas didn’t resist, and Dean didn’t let go until they were out in the street.

It was surreal, standing out under the streetlights and knowing. There was a light drizzle starting to fall, and Dean wished for a moment that time would actually freeze. Because they were in that small space between leaving and going, and the dread had yet to creep back in completely. Because the sky hadn’t started to brighten yet. Because whatever else he was, Cas was warm and real and next to him, and Dean was starting to think that somehow, despite everything, he’d found something a little like a best friend.

He realized he must have spoken some of this aloud when he saw the raindrops begin to slow, and then freeze in place. The rain hung suspended as if tiny gems had formed midair, and the unexpected and raw beauty of it stole Dean’s breath away. He didn’t have to look at Cas to know this was a sacrifice to accomplish. That he was using what little juice he had left to make Dean feel better. It made Dean want to yell at him. It made Dean want to hug him, the short, gruff kind of hug that said he was too moved to speak.

He didn’t do either of these things, but Cas seemed to understand. And so they stood in that moment, time suspended, for the longest time. And then the rain started to fall again.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean said, because it was something to say.

“We should walk back,” was all Cas said. So they did.

***NOW***

“So what do you want?” Dean asked at last. He even managed to look Cas in the eye when he asked it, which was something. Of course, Cas looked away from him immediately, back at his cereal. Back at what was safe to want, maybe. “After Chuck stops writing. After it all ends.”

“Just… Just this,” said Cas, and he sounded guileless when he said it. He sounded like a person he hadn’t been in a long time, a person sitting on a park bench or a bar stool and wondering at the horrific closeness of humanity. Of the screaming anxiety of it, that gave way sometimes to joy so unexpected it could bring a man to his knees. Or woman. Or whatever. Like it wasn’t his place to want too much, to expect too much. Like getting to be here, getting to stay, was already too much.

Which was probably why he had run away so many times in the first place, but Dean didn’t like to think about that.

“You ever think a little harder about that?” he asked instead.

“It’s not in my best interests.”

“Says who?”

“It’s not in your best interests,” Cas bit back, and that was a place to start at least.

“When we were in Purgatory,” said Dean, trying and failing to keep his mouth from going dry. He swallowed hard, and ignored the pulsing sound of his heartbeat rushing in his ears. “When I couldn’t find you --”

“I know, Dean,” said Cas, and he sounded tired. “It’s okay, I know.”

“I was going to say something,” said Dean. “Something… I should have said all that shit to your face, I know that. But I was going to say something else.”

“Something?” Cas asked, and now he sounded bored. But the careful kind of bored, that let Dean know the dude was trying to hurt his feelings a little bit. Because it was better not to poke at raw nerves. Except, all that was left of Dean was raw nerves these days. And Cas too.

“Yeah. Something to think about. Something to consider,” said Dean, and why he couldn’t say the actual words out loud, he didn’t know. Maybe it was seeing the hurt and confusion on Eileen’s face, the tortured pain on Sam’s, as they had had to grapple with how much of what they felt was real, and how much was God trying to appeal to his more romantically inclined demographics. Maybe it didn’t matter either way, and the simple truth of it was that Dean had never really had it in him to say them.

So he reached out and grasped one of Cas’ hands instead. The one that was resting around the cereal bowl, protectively, as if he was concerned a sudden earthquake might spill the sugar dusted milk that remained in the bowl. Dean heard a sharp intake of breath, and then nothing.

“When this is all over,” Cas said, though he sounded sad. Dean wished he could brush that sadness away, burn it, and bury it. Wished he could make himself be a different man, someone who didn’t feel so scared and empty and broken. Someone who wouldn’t make Cas look like the mere suggestion of something else, something more, was rending his heart in two.

“If you wanted,” Dean said, trying to sound like he didn’t care. He tried to pull his hand back, but Cas caught his wrist and held it, just for a moment.

“Nothing would make me happier.”

And then he let go. And then he cleared his dishes away and left. Dean let him, silently wondering why the hell Cas had spoken those words like a death knell. Like a beat in a story.

***THEN***

It wasn’t a long walk back to the motel, but Dean felt more unsteady on his feet the closer they got. Maybe he wasn’t drunk, but he was addled on despair, and whatever strength he’d relied on to keep him on his own two feet all his life was finally failing him.

He could feel Cas staring at him, as he finally just sat on the wet sidewalk and rested. He wondered if it would be so bad to fall asleep here. To catch cold and postpone the inevitable, somehow. Instead, Cas reached out a hand and helped haul Dean to his feet. Guardian angels were not enablers it seemed. At least not past a certain point.

But feeling Cas’ hand in his steadied Dean for the moment. It felt the way holding his mother’s hand had felt as a toddler, walking home from preschool. As if Cas were too big and too powerful and too safe for anything to go wrong, as long as Dean didn’t let go of him. But of course, Dean did have to let go of him eventually.

They stopped at the door, able to hear Sam’s snores from the other side. Dean smiled a little, and dropped Cas’ hand.

“I guess I found someone to take me home,” he snarked. The joke fell flat, and an uncomfortable look crossed Cas’ face. Dean bit the side of his cheek, drawing blood. “Sorry. I’m a shitty human being at the best of times, but this is…”

And there it was, the weight of it all crashing down around them again. Not that Dean had needed to breathe normally ever again. It was the end of the world for Christ’s sake. The Apocalypse with a capital A. And there was Sam, a fucking sacrificial lamb to make it all go away.

Whatever moment of peace Cas had given him, he didn’t deserve it. And he wanted it back. So, so much.

“You’re not,” Cas said at last. “A shitty human being. Most of the time.”

“There’s this human expression. It’s called damning with faint praise.”

Cas smiled.

“I’ve heard that one,” he said. And then he nodded towards the door. “Get some sleep Dean. It will all be worse in the morning.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Dean. But he did feel tired. And maybe that would be enough to sleep. For a while. “I’ll see you on the other side of it all.”

Except of course, he hadn’t really. Not until it was much too late.

***NOW***

Dean found Cas in the library, paging through one of the old magazines in the Men of Letters collection. One of the ones with glossy spreads of nice furniture and houses and gardens. Something Dean had never had, and Cas would probably never have either. Dean barely stopped to think about this before he took the magazine out of Cas’ hands and pulled him to his feet.

“Dean, what are you --?”

And then Dean kissed him. On the lips. It probably would have been a smoother move if Cas hadn’t been mid-sentence when it happened, but that sorted itself out soon enough. Dean would congratulate whoever had taught Cas how to kiss, but he kinda suspected Cas was operating mostly off of tips Dean had off-handedly given him over the years (to be used on people who were not Dean, because Dean hated himself), and vanity was a sin or whatever.

But if he were being vain, Dean might have said he had always been good at kissing. Because it was a conversation, but not one that made you say the hard parts. Because it was a way to listen to someone else, and hear everything they weren’t willing to say out loud. Because it was too little and too much of another person. Because it felt nice in a primal way, one that did not take into account complicated realities.

And if he were being honest, he might have said even if it had been the worst kiss in the world, it still would have been pretty great because of who he was kissing. Because of everything else that had come before.

And then, they stopped. It felt right to step back just then. As if one more second would have been too much to bear.

“I just wanted to,” Dean said, before Cas could say anything. “Just the once.”

Cas nodded at him, looking a little astounded. Dean supposed he couldn’t blame the poor guy. Not like he’d asked for his best friend to lay one on him. Though he hadn’t really seemed to mind either.

“Okay,” Dean said, when Cas didn’t say anything else. “Okay.”

Dean had nearly managed to stumble out the door before Cas called after him.

“Thank you, Dean,” he said. And he sounded like he meant it. Dean was too tired to pull together what was a set of thoroughly mixed signals and instead just stood there as Cas struggled to put more words together. “I- Yes- When this is over.”

“When this is over,” Dean repeated. It felt like a promise. It just also felt like an empty one.

But maybe that’s what all new beginnings felt like. Painful, but worth living through to see something different. Something better maybe.

It was at least worth holding on to.

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the last DeanCas fic I'll write, barring very interesting events in the final run of episodes. I am still planning on finishing my unfinished stuff! I just won't write anything new from this point on.
> 
> Not sure if I have any repeat readers, but figured I'd add this because why not.


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